Podcast 15: Simulation Sickness and Virtual Reality

Ever feel motion sickness or some other kind of discomfort when playing a game? Know someone who has? With the arrival of consumer grade virtual reality headsets, simulation sickness is getting a lot of renewed attention in the gaming industry. Hardware makers and game developers have done a lot to minimize it, but ultimately the causes of simulation sickness aren’t completely understood. Nonetheless, the potential for nausea inducing or headache causing experiences in virtual reality have very real implications for those developing for these new platforms.

In this episode I talk with Ben Lewis Evans, a psychologist and UX researcher at Epic Games, about simulation sickness and virtual reality. We talk about what causes it and what limitations hardware and game designers have to design around in order to avoid it.